Grace Based Parenting Review

Grace Based Parenting by Tom Kimmel is a Christian non-fiction book on the topic of parenting. He looks at what grace really is and what it looks like (and doesn’t look like) applied to our parenting.

I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars. I found this book helpful in some ways. He was honest and didn’t sugar coat things yet spoke gently and in a way to foster understanding. It never felt like he was condemning people for their poor parenting style or choices, but very clearly didn’t condone them either. His definition of being a grace-based parent is solid and Biblical.

Kimmel has a lot of good things to say and I am definitely thinking and praying about them. However, I felt a lack of practical application. Or perhaps it is that he didn’t speak into the way I learn and, for me, there was a lack of the teaching aspect. So now I am left with a lot of good ideas and principles but no idea how to actually apply them to my parenting. I don’t know what these principles look like in action, just have plenty of examples of what they don’t look like.

Part of the problem is that Kimmel is dealing in extremes. Many of his examples are obviously in the wrong or in the right. These are situations that the majority of people (or as I see it the average Christian family) are unlikely ever to go through. I would have liked to see (and needed to see) some more practical everyday type of things that we all face and what grace-based parenting looks like in those situations.

As hopeful as I was when I began this book, I am ending with disappointment. This has turned into just another book to put high, truly unreachable, expectations on me as a parent and then leaves out the steps I can take and things I can implement to even attempt to reach those expectations. Just saying “treat your children as God treats you” isn’t actually helpful (it is obvious and true, but not helpful).

It feels like I could summarize this book as saying: This is the perfect parenting method, you can’t ever fully attain it because only God could do that, but you should still strive for it. This is what it looks like and the damage you will cause if you don’t do it. Oh, the steps to get there and become grace-based parents, we don’t include those (they are apparently supposed to be obvious), sorry.

I am left feeling like a failure as a parent and hopeless to do anything but ruin my children’s futures and permanently damage them. I am so overwhelmed at the prospect of failing them (and God) that I don’t even know where to begin and end up too discouraged to even try. In the end I guess I will just give it over to the Lord, continue to seek Him and continue to pray He will change me into the parent that I am supposed to be (and trust any damage I do He will heal).

Overall, Kimmel means well, and this grace-based parenting system is sound and Biblical, and I agree with much of what he says. However, my lasting impression is not one of hope and new-found perspective in my parenting with new tools to implement (which is what I was expecting to find).